19 December, 2012

The European Physical Journal Special Topics

Vol. 214 (November II 2012)

Participatory Science and Computing for Our Complex World

A special issue of position papers that underly the thinking in the FuturICT project (which we are a small part of) has been published. In three of these we are co-authors, but also part of the discussions that have lead to several other of these.

Aims and scope. The meeting of researchers from MAS engineering and
the social/economic/organizational sciences is extensively recognized
for its role in cross-fertilization, and has undoubtedly been an
important source of inspiration for the body of knowledge that has
been produced in the MAS area. Multi-Agent Based Simulation (MABS) is
a vibrant inter-disciplinary area which brings together researchers
within the agent-based social simulation community (ABSS) and the
Multiagent Systems community (MAS).

The focus of ABSS is on simulating and organization social behaviours
in order to understand real social systems via the development and
testing of new concepts. The focus of MAS is on the solution of hard
engineering problems related to the construction, deployment and
efficient operation of multiagent systems.
The range of technical issues that MABS has dealt with, and continues
to deal with, is quite diverse and extensive.

The range of technical issues that MABS has dealt with and continues
to deal with is diverse and extensive and includes:

Simulation of social and economic behavior:
- formal and agent models of social behavior
- cognitive modeling and social simulation
- game theory and simulation
- social structure: social networks and simulating organizations
- simulating social complexity (e.g. structures and norms, social
order, emergence of cooperation and coordinated action,
self-organization, the micro-macro link)

In addition to the above topics, we are also interested in submissions
that address issues that have attracted MABS in the recent years.
These include,
- Data driven simulations
- MABS that link real-world data in real time.
- simulation modelling of multidirectional dynamics in complex social systems
- Provenance and ontology-driven approaches in building simulations
- Use of qualitative Evidence to inform behavioral rules
- Design and analysis of simulation experiments including uncertainty analysis
- Handling Big Data in MABS including sense-making

MABS WORKSHOP SERIES
The workshop is a continuation of the International Workshop series on
Multi-Agent-Based Simulation (MABS). Further details of the previous
workshops can be found at http://www.pcs.usp.br/~mabs/.

IMPORTANT DATES
February 3, 2013 - Deadline for paper submission.
March 1, 2013 - Acceptance or rejection notification is sent to authors.
March 10, 2013 - Deadline for authors sending their revised
contribution, according to reviewers’ remarks.
May 6-57, 2013 - MABS 2013 workshop takes place.

PUBLICATION
All accepted papers will be printed in the AAMAS workshop proceedings.
In addition, following the tradition of the previous MABS workshops,
we intend to publish the accepted papers, after a further reviewing
process, in Springer-Verlag's Multi-Agent-Based Simulation book
series, LNAI.

ACCEPTANCE STANDARDS
All submissions will go through a peer review process, with two or
three independent PC members reviewing each submission. Only those
deemed to be 1) relevant to the workshop's aims, 2) presenting
original work, and 3) of good quality and clarity will be accepted.
Following the workshop, participants will be required to revise their
papers, which will undergo a second review process before publication
in the post-proceedings.

The studentship is jointly
run by the JHI and the CPM/MMU. The successful candidate will be based in
Aberdeen, but will visit Manchester a few times a year. The studentship is for
3 years and provides: (A) a stipend of £13,590 per year for living expenses per year
(non-taxable) (B) 3 years PhD student fees (EU/UK student rate) (C) support for
travel to Manchester (6 trips of 2-3 days duration a year) and/or international
conferences up to a maximum total of £5130). The PhD will be awarded by the
MMU. The JHI and the MMU will jointly provide training and support for the
period of study. The candidate must be willing to live near the JHI in
Aberdeen, travel to Manchester for discussions and occasionally travel to
international conferences.

The Institute for Social Change, the Cathie Marsh Centre for Census and Survey Research and the Centre for Policy Modelling will be running a 2-day introduction to agent-based simulation. This workshop is funded by a grant from the methods@manchester initiative. The course is free to attend and will be suitable for people without any experience of computer programming, but is particularly aimed at post-graduate social researchers, e.g. PhD students, post-docs, lecturers.

This workshop will introduce participants to the modelling of dynamic social processes, such as group membership, influence, imitation, collaboration and innovation, through a series of agent-based simulations.

Participants will gain understanding of the simulation of social processes by exploring working simulation models and by adapting these models to describe different types of process. It will give participants a first-hand experience of complexity science including the ideas of emergence, self-organisation, chaos, ‘lock in’ and dynamic systems. We will also consider the limitations and difficulties of such techniques, and how they complement more traditional approaches in the social sciences.

This will be a largely hands-on course, exposing participants to a series of simulation models in the NetLogo simulation language. It will include: brief introductions, simplified example models, guided suggestions for interacting with them and assistants to help when you get stuck. There will be some summary sessions to bring out the lessons learnt and additional materials to guide participants onto the next steps of working with simulations.

Executive SummaryThe unifying goal of the FuturICT FET flagship is to integrate the fields of information and communication technologies (ICT), social sciences and complexity science, to develop a new kind of participatory science and technology that will help us to understand, explore and manage the complex, global, socially interactive systems that make up our world today, while at the same time paving the way for a new paradigm of ICT systems that will leverage socio-inspired self-organisation, self-regulation, and collective awareness.

FuturICT will bring together, on a global level, Big Data, new modelling techniques and new forms of interaction, leading to a new understanding of society and its co-evolution with technology. It will place Europe at the forefront of a major scientific drive to understand, explore and manage our complex, connected world in a sustainable and resilient manner.

FuturICT is motivated by the fact that ubiquitous communication and sensing blur the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds, creating unparalleled opportunities for understanding the socio-economic fabric of our world, and for empowering humanity to make informed, responsible decisions for its future. The intimate, complex and dynamic relationship between global, networked ICT systems and human society directly influences the complexity and manageability of both. This also opens up the possibility to fundamentally change the way ICT will be designed, built and operated, to reflect the need for socially interactive, ethically sensitive, trustworthy, self-organised and reliable systems.

FuturICT will create a new public resource - value-oriented tools and models to aggregate, access, query and understand vast amounts of data. Information from open sources, real-time devices and mobile sensors will be integrated with multi-scale models of the behaviour of social, technological, environmental and economic systems, which can be interrogated by policy-makers, business people and citizens alike. Together, these will build an information eco-system that will lead to new business models, scientific paradigm shifts and more rapid and effective ways to create and disseminate new knowledge and social benefits – thereby forming an innovation accelerator.

To realise this vision, FuturICT is organised into a number of closely interacting Focus Areas which will be introduced in Section 2. Given below are a high level overview of the research areas, the motivation behind the research and a plan of action to accomplish the FuturICT goal.

FuturICT will create a “Planetary Nervous System” (PNS) to orchestrate a high-level, goal driven selforganised, collection and evaluation of Big Data generated from sources such as social media, public infrastructures, smart phones or sensor networks. The aim is to create an increasingly detailed “measurement” and a better understanding of the state of the world. For this, the sensing concept used in the physical and environmental sciences will be combined with machine learning and semantic technologies and extended to social and economic contexts. The information provided by the Planetary Nervous System will fuel the development of more realistic, and eventually, global scale models that bring data and theories together, to form a “Living Earth Simulator” (LES) enabling the simulation of “what if …” scenarios. The LES will reveal causal interdependencies and visualise possible short-term scenarios, highlight possible side effects and test critical model assumptions. The “Global Participatory Platform” (GPP) will open up FuturICT’s data, models, and methods for everyone. It will also support interactivity, participation, and collaboration, and furthermore provide experimental and educational platforms. The activities to develop a “Global System Science” (GSS) will lay the theoretical foundations for these platforms, while the focus on socio-inspired ICT will use the insights gained to identify suitable designs for socially interactive systems and the use of mechanism that have proven effective in society as operational principles for ICT systems. FuturICT’s “Exploratories” will integrate the functionalities of the PNS, LES, and GPP, and produce real-life impacts in areas such as Health, Finance, Future Cities, Smart Energy Systems, and Environment. Furthermore, the “Innovation Accelerator” (IA) will develop new approaches to accelerate inventions and innovations. A strong focus on ethics will cut across all activities and develop value-sensitive ICT. Targeted integration efforts will push towards the creation of a powerful and integrated ICT platform that puts humans in the centre of attention.